Page 59 of Stilettos & Secrets on the 7 Seas

“Holy fucking hell.” I toppled over the railing and onto the deck, cartwheeling my legs and exposing my undercarriage to the many eyes standing topside. Me and my problematic petticoats kicked around on the deck like an overturned crab.

“Yer woman has a tongue on her,” one of the men called to the giant, then bent down to get a closer look at me.

I snarled at him. Ace stepped over the rail and scooped me to my feet. “She hasn’t had her afternoon tea. Makes her quite the cranky pants.”

I stood and smoothed the fluff of my skirts before glancing around at the men who had gathered, the vast length of the ship, and the blue sea beyond. My inner voice held up a sign that read Keep Calm: They Can Smell Fear.

“Well, this is nice.” I ran my fingers over—what was this large rope pulley doohickey called? I walked toward the giant, a hint of amusement in his eyes. Mouths gaped at me, and a few gasped. “Not a Captain Hook ship, but not bad.”

When I reached him, he frowned down at me. “Who is this, Hook?”

Before I could answer, a thin, balding man with scraggly shoulder-length hair and a red bandana around his neck stepped forward and huffed at the captain. “Rowan, why’d ye bring the woman?”

Rowan?Oh my god. Even his name screamed romance novel.

“Dinnae worry, Shrug,” Rowan said. “The lass is a healer.”

A uniform sucking intake of air followed, then an eerie silence.

“Ye brought a witch aboard?” asked a man as tall as Shrug was short, with brilliant blue eyes and skin the color of an eight ball. “Yer sentencing us ta death.”

“Women ’board a ship, ’tis unlucky.” Shrug fingered his bandana. A few heads nodded. Others stared, and some didn’t look at me at all.

Rowan’s gaze dropped from me down to the weasel of a man. “Shrug, take her to the brig until I’m ready for her.”

The brig? Wasn’t that the sailing term for jail? My inner voice flipped through her dictionary of eighteenth-century sailing lingo.

“What aboot this one?” Shrug motioned to Ace.

Rowan only grunted and disappeared down a ladder to the deck below.

“He’s the new cook,” one of the men who was on the rowboat with us announced to the crew. A round of whoops rose from the men. It sounded as if they were more excited for a cook than a healer.

“The last thing I cooked was microwave popcorn.” Ace fidgeted next to me.

“Boy, take this one to the galley,” Shrug instructed a boy no more than twelve, then pushed at my shoulder. “This way, witch.”

Shrug led me below decks, down a steep ladder where I stepped on the hem of my dress twice, to a musty, damp, dark cell, and shoved me inside. “Why are you putting me in here? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Shrug slammed the cage door shut and stood outside the entrance to the prison ward, for lack of a better term.

How in the name of Blackbeard’s ghost was I supposed to cure the captain of whatever STD ailed him and find Marco locked in here? I had traded one jail cell for another.

After my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit space, I realized it was rather clean for an eighteenth-century pirate ship. The floors were scrubbed and there weren’t any cobwebs that I could see from the sunlight coming from a small porthole.

“Hey,” I called out to Shrug.

“No speak to me, witch,” Shrug said. “I’ll not hear yer cursed tongue.”

“I’m not a witch. I’m a healer. Heea-ler.”

“Whatever ye say, witch.”

The fatigue that always accompanied time travel washed over me, and I sat hard on the wood floor, my dress pillowed around me. Had I made a mistake jumping without the WTF’s permission? How dare they lock me up like a criminal. I had to escape. Marco’s life depended on it.

And what did Rowan mean they needed a cook? Where was Marco? If Marco wasn’t aboard theSea Storm, my chance of finding him before he got arrested just went to snail dung on hardtack.

The subtle rocking of the ship must have lured me to sleep because I jerked awake and blinked until I recognized my surroundings. The floor creaked and the boatswain stood on the threshold.

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